1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to methods for operating a processor to index data. More specifically, one aspect of the present invention relates to a method for real time generating of an iconic table of contents from raw audio data, video data, or other data.
2. Information Disclosure Statement
Generally, systems which allow a user to manually index digital video and audio data by textual annotation are known in the prior art. Systems which allow playback of digital video and audio data concerning a conference while recording said conference are also known in the prior art.
"Where Were We: Making and Using Near-synchronous, Pre-narrative Video," Scott L. Minneman and Steve R. Harrison, (Minneman) was published in Multimedia 1993, and discloses manual indexing of video and audio information through the use of complex computer hardware with high memory capacity. The Minneman system is one in which the user may manually select a video image and manually annotate the video image with text for subsequent use. Minneman discloses no intelligent agent for filtering significant occurrences on the video data.
"A Magnifier Tool for Video Data" (Mills) was written by Michael Mills, Jonathan Cohen and Yin Yin Wong and was published in the May 3-7, 1992 issue of the Proceedings of Computer Human Interaction on pages 93-98. Mills discloses a simplistic temporal index of video data which does not identify significant occurrences in the content of the video data but merely indexes video data by digitizing still frame samples at regular time intervals and does not appear to operate in real time because when the "Magnifier" program is initially entered six frames spanning the segments of an entire 30 minute presentation are illustrated.
"CECED: A System For informal Multimedia Collaboration" was written by Earl Craighill, Ruth Lang, Martin Fong, and Keith Skinner and published in Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Multimedia of 1993. The Craighill publication discloses a "Process Manager which automatically collects, stores, and replays design traces that were generated during a single user or multiparty design session and only allows the user to select and annotate significant occurrences in the process trace after playback.
"Video Conferencing File Storage and Management in Multimedia Computer Systems" was written by P. Venkat Rangan in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, March 1993, pp. 901-919. The Rangan article discloses a video conferencing system which allows the user to playback a recorded conference while the real time conference is continuing. The Rangan article discloses a Video File Server that allows a user-participant in a conference to manually record the proceedings of a conference into a document and the Video File Server stores the video associated with the document in a textual file. However, the Video File Server does not automatically filter important occurrences and does not create a table of contents or index based thereon.